From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2004-06-06T02:19:11+09:00
Subject: Re: How to ducktype a Hash?

On Friday 04 June 2004 20:48, Claus Spitzer wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Jun 2004 11:15:37 +0900, Sean O'Dell <sean@celsoft.com> wrote:
>
> > In both cases, does that mean that the object has hash-like
> > functionality, or just that the object responds to those two methods?  Is
> > there some definition somewhere that says "it's a hash if it has these
> > methods?"  I actually have hash-like objects that DON'T respond to either
> > of those two methods, but it would be easy enough to add fake ones.  I
> > hate adding fake methods just to id a hash interface, it's a kludge.
> >
> Well, what exactly do all your hash-like objects have in common that
> is not present in any other object? :keys is a pretty good identifier
> for a hash... since I know of no other data structure that has a key
> (mind you, I said "_I_ know of", there could well be one that I don't
> know). .

The problem is, there's no definition of what a hash-like object really is.  
If there were something I could depend on, I'd check respond_to? for that.  
For my own personal uses, all I care about is [] and []=.

	Sean O'Dell